"BlackSoul: Extended Edition" is a third person adventure game with an intriguing story set in England in 1972: people have been turned into psychotic killers by an unknown infection and you must try to help Ava and Sean survive in the quarantined area and find out the truth.

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"An old-school third person survival horror game. Developed by XenosVision."

About This Game

"BlackSoul: Extended Edition" is a third person adventure game with an intriguing story set in England in 1972: people have been turned into psychotic killers by an unknown infection and you must try to help Ava and Sean survive in the quarantined area and find out the truth. You won't spend all your time on a killing spree, but you'll need to solve many puzzles which will challenge you.

Forget any government research labs in which they're working on some kind of ultimate weapon; instead think of something much sadder and crueler...and even if the story is not based on truth, we'll tell you about some events that really happened in the mid century.

An incomplete game that was probably still going to be bad once it was "finished." I can forgive the weak controls and budget graphics, but the camera work is a travesty. There is no way to get any sense of where you are. Apparently, the developers said 8 months ago fixes were coming. I think we can assume that's not happening. Don't buy this game, I'm relieved I got it in a bundle.

I really wanted to like BlackSoul: Extended Edition because it's an old-school survival horror that pays homage to the classics, such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark, but I just can't due to the large amount of bugs, glitches, loading screens and camera issues.

The first problem I noticed with the game was the horrendous "Cinematographic" camera which sometimes aims at the ground for some reason, but thankfully, you can choose the far better tracking camera which helps a lot when you're navigating through dark areas. Loading screens are a pain the backside too because they're everywhere, even you're about to enter a small room. However, the developers will be removing most of them in a future update (if that will ever happen).

One of the main problems that I had with BlackSoul: Extended Edition is that I was defenseless. The first weapon that I picked up instantly vanished from my inventory, so I had no choice but to run from one room to another while avoiding zombies who just so happen to be standing on paths that I need to take. As soon as I died, I quit the game and uninstalled it.

Right now, I can't recommend this game to anyone, not even those who enjoy the classic survivial horror games of the 90s. If the main issues that I mentioned in this review are solved in a future patch, then I will consider playing this game again and hopefully give it a positive review.

When I loaded the game, I found the writing was almost impossible to read as the text size was tiny and the letters were kind of muddled. I started it up and got to the house wherupon I managed to solve an astronomy puzzle. I then kept getting killed by zombies as I had no weapon and couldn't find one, despite finding ammo. Gave up as I couldn't get into it and couldn't read the text. Yuk!

BlackSoul tries to recapture the magic of those classic survival horror games from the 1990s, such as Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Unfortunately, Blacksoul resurrects many of the flaws from that era, while leaving most of the enjoyable elements of those classics dead and buried.

The negatives? Loading screens between each... and... every... single... room... transition. Any amount of horror atmosphere BlackSoul might have otherwise had is completely ruined by the immersion-breaking load screens. The only dread I experienced while playing this game resulted from the knowledge that I'd have to stare at that loading screen again when I moved to the next room.

Then we have the clunky character/camera control. The ridiculously simplistic and boring combat. The inability to 'Esc' out of various menus. The terrible sound effects, animations, lighting, and textures. The awful character models.

Now, I'm generally of the opinion that good art design is more important than the latest whiz-bang graphical effects - but even in that sense, BlackSoul looks dull, flat, cheap, and uninspired.

As for positives, BlackSoul does have a decently suspenseful soundtrack; music is very important in maintaining proper atmosphere in these sorts of games, and they did manage to get that right. Puzzle design, while not brilliant or innovative, is at least logical (mostly), and the game generally provides all the clues necessary to solves its puzzles without resorting to pure guesswork.

Sadly, it takes much more than 'decent' music and 'okay' puzzles to make a good survival horror game. I wouldn't recommend BlackSoul to even the most die-hard fan of classic survival horror.

You might be wondering why i don't recommend this game as I have 18 hours on record, well my friends, I must tell you the truth, this game is so boring I LITERALLY FELL ASLEEP TWICE while trying to play and the game kept running. Run away right now and delete this item from your wishlist or spend your money on salty crackers, it may provide more joy than buying this game.

A short while ago I wrote a review for The Evil Within, cheekily declaring it "the best Resident Evil game since Resident Evil 4". Between the incredibly awkward controls (which can only be PARTIALLY remapped), interminably long and frequent load screens, chaotically uncontrollable camera angles, ridiculously overdone sound effects, and complete lack of any facial expression from our protagonist as she is bitten in the neck by a zombie in a manner SO reminiscent of Resident Evil 1 that the word "homage" surely wouldn't cover it in court...I guess I'm gonna have to declare this the WORST Resident Evil game since Resident Evil 4. Nice screenshots, though...and I did dig the music lifted almost wholesale from Resident Evil 2...

Verdict: 3/10.

(PS Apparently "fixes" are on the way, but since they were promised way back in MARCH of last year, I don't suppose we should be holding our collective breaths. For now, I'm going to have to agree with the majority opinion that this game is presently "unplayable".)

I think this game is pretty great. it pays homage to the old school survival horror classics (resident evil 1,2 &3, silent hill and others). Which has long since died and i so dearly miss it. It has a dark atmosphere where you head to a remote place to do somthing and save someone (im not giving away the story). Theres puzzles/riddles like there was in silent hill (More complicated then Resident evil).The map design is pretty good, with lots of detail which makes it easy to skip over things. Its like the olden days where you had to pay attention to the game to play it. Theres no arrows, no audiologs, no flashing objects that indicates you can interact with them, simply put no bull ♥♥♥♥.The camera angles are a mix between silent hill third person mode and the classic stationary Resident evil style depending where you are in the gameTheres some downpoints however. My main hate with this is there's no gamepad support (which can be fixed using xpadder). secondly, but ill forgive them the character animation is b-class.

Its kinda scary how the female character you play as looks like a creepy goth guy.

As much as I want to write a negative review for the Devs not sticking to their word and fixing a lot of the problems (last update was literally a year ago tomorrow), the game isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. I almost beat it, the only reason I gave up was because I got sick of going in circles and just lost momentum. It's not Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but if you're into the genre, like worser B-Game genre, it's actually quite entertaining.

Note, I did not spend 35 hours on this game as it says. Honestly, probably a solid 8.

Let me get this out of the way: I wouldn't define BlackSoul: Extended Edition as a good game. It's got too many problems with it for me to say that. And honestly, the only people who are going to enjoy it are those that liked B-Tier horror games in the late 90s and early 2000s, games like Deep Fear or Blue Stinger or Kuon. However, despite all of its problems, I did end up enjoying the game, and it does get better as it goes along.

BlackSoul: Extended Edition is an old-school styled survival-horror game, where you utilize limited supplies, puzzles, and clunky tank controls to make your way through several locations. The story is that you're a brother going to a nearby forest to rescue your sister... You play as both through the course of the game. However, honestly speaking, the story hardly has any presence, and the ending is disappointing. But I did enjoy the notes that you occasionally pick up in the game. They were interesting enough, and honestly most of the game's story is told through them.

Audio-wise, it's mostly good. The music deserves particular mention, as it's all quite good and very horror-sounding, and adds a lot to the game experience. Audio isn't bad, and some of the ambiance is legitimately creepy, but some sounds, like the sounds the zombies make, get way too familiar and aren't particularly fantastic. And the voicing is god awful, but thankfully there's only like four spoken lines of dialogue in the whole game.

Graphics actually aren't too shabby for a small budget indie effort. Some good lighting effects, interesting designed rooms, and good art direction. A few places managed to visually strike with me. However, some areas look far better than others, the animations in the game are wonky, and some textures (especially outside) are notably very low quality.

The gameplay is rather simple. Your character moves like a tank, find key items, solve puzzles, and make progress to the next location. Enemies blockade your way, and should either be taken out or avoided. You have limited ammo and healing items, so making decisions about your inventory is crucial. One feature here to note is that if an enemy manages to grab and gnaw on you, you get poisoned, which slowly drains your health. You have to find and use antidotes to heal poison, but they're limited, so sometimes its better to stick with being poisoned as you may very well quickly run into and get poisoned again by another enemy.

On that note, there's only three types of enemies in this game; Slow-stumbling zombies, speed-walking Zombies, and sprinting zombies. So basically, there's only zombies in this game. The speed of the zombie is random from zombie to zombie, but notably different zombie models take a different number of hits, which is always the same with that particular zombie model no matter what speed they move at. This limited enemy variety leaves definitely things to be desired, but also ultimately doesn't take too much from the game, as there's a larger focus on puzzles and exploration, which thankfully there is some good variety on.

The game is not short actually, it should take someone 10-16 hours to complete it the first time. The game has eight main locations, and it should be noted that they get better as the game progresses (the later areas I found a lot more enjoyable and interesting than the first few). The ultimate trial in the game comes from the second main location, The Graveyard. This location drags on, has a lot of backtracking, and honestly is probably the worst location in the game. But it's after this point the game also starts to get a lot better after the fact.

The puzzles are varied and fun, ranging from astronomical puzzles, riddle puzzles, slide tile puzzles, visual puzzles, memory puzzles, and more. The harder puzzles also have a 'solve it' option if you get stuck on them. However, a few puzzles were lifted directly out of old horror games and just altered around a bit, the most notable one being a clone of the Piano Puzzle from Silent Hill 1.

There's a few clone elements here actually. The game has a few scares and a few of them are effective, but a few were carbon-copied from Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

And this is all ignoring the game's biggest problem; it's performance. The developers chose a very old engine to make the game, and it has a lot of problems. You have to manually resize the window. The game crashes every so often. While I had no issues running it, some people have to overcome hurdles just to make it work. A lot of this is on the engine the developers chose, which pre-dates even the Source Engine, but why the developers chose this engine and rolled with it when it has so many problems especially on modern machines is beyond me.

And generally speaking I wouldn't call this a good game, or a game for everyone to experience. Honestly, if you do not have severe love for the genre, you should probably pass. There are far better horror games, and this game's problems can wear thin if you're not patient. The game gets better as it goes along, but it's nowhere near the quality of, say, Resident Evil or Silent Hill.

But as a genre enthusiast I actually did enjoy my time with it. I'm a gamer that has played a lot of horror games from all different eras of the genre. The good atmosphere and scares in places, music, puzzles, and interesting environments later in was enough for me. I wouldn't recommend it if you don't really love the genre or lack patience, but there are some interesting ideas and moments here for fans of the genre, and while it lacks elements it really shouldn't (this game would of honestly been so much better with a better story and enemy selection), it did keep enough going for me to want to keep going.

Difficult, flawed, and only really for genre enthusiasts with patience and acceptance for flaws, the game isn't a hidden gem, but rather a mixed bag of good and bad which managed to keep me interested during its 10-16 hour campaign. It's really not for everyone, and it's not what I would call a good game, but it was interesting to see a raw low-budget modern indie take on the genre with clearly bigger ambitions and heart from people who loved the genre, but missed a few notes of what makes it what it is, but tackle other areas fairly well.

Edit: After downgrading my drivers, the game actually runs. It should still be patched so that it works with the beta drivers. The game will only open in 640x480 window mode, so I had to maximize the windowed game which results in the text being COMPLETELY illegible.

This game is abyssmal. I've played 50 minutes now, and it is inexcusibly awful. Everything is inconsistent. Unacceptable and terrible sound design, loading times for EACH TINY LITTLE AREA in the game. The inventory is a complete joke and looks like it's designed in paint with textures and pictures slapped together from Google. I've recorded my 50 minutes of gameplay which contains my first impressions. Will link to them here shortly.

My first post > (Will not load at all, literally unplayable in its present condition. "Blacksoul.exe has stopped working" everytime I attempt to load the game, suggested fixes found so far have failed to work.)

EDIT: To test to see if downgrading my drivers would resolve the issue, I have rolled back my drivers and the game has finally loaded without error, the driver issue is currently being looked in to by the developer and I would like to extend a thank you to the developer for the feedback towards my initial response.

In saying that, I have mixed opinions on my first impressions, the overall atmosphere of the game so far is at least on the right track to what I came to expect and I do like the soundtrack to accompany this, however the immersion is soon broken by the frequent mass of loading screens between each small segment (by that I mean room by room). I currently found the best way to play the game is in cinematic view in the traditional fixed camera Resident Evil style and am more than pleased to see this in another horror game rather than the over the shoulder action cam. so that's a gold star there ! well done !

On a further sidenote, the scenery and settings for the game have been rendered beautifully and really lend to the atmosphere !

However the cons still out weigh the pros but not by the largest stretch I originally thought when the game wouldn't work. With some performance tweaks to reduce the frequency of loading screens, re-designing of the Inventory UI to a better standard, control scheme to possibly allow controller support and finally some extended hardware supprt to prevent further problems that I originally faced, the game has alot of potential, but at present I would say it feels more like an early access game with its issues rather than a finished product (no offense intended by saying that) and would benefit from further developement.

As stated before, it does have potential and I hope the developer will have continued support and updates for this title, I am more than hopeful for further updates and will look forward to changing my opinion to "recommended" in the near future.

(!!!DO NOT BUY!!!)The game tries to recreate the original resident evil games, but fails in almost every way.

Poor texture, model and animation quality while also being very dark and almost all black and white.Controls are limiting only back, forward, aim, action, inventory and reload make's it painful walking around without being able to look around while you move. A very poor U.I the first document's you can't read the bottom line because it go's off screen and map's that were scribbled with the black pen in paint. It's poorly designed I could walk into a area with a enemies before the game gave me a weapon. And it fails to create atmosphere without any build up to the first encounter it played horror music way to loud when the first zombie appears and a minute to long after he was dead.

This game is bad by mod standard's.The original resident evil game's from over 10 year's ago are way better technicly and for gameplay.

People this is old school survival horror not some new school Resident evil crap.

The game is great yes it has bugs and glitches but this game is one of those games that has Re-play factor its like the old "REAL" RE games mixed with alone in the dark mixed with silent hill!!

This is how a third person survival horror game should be and what i like about the devs too is they put in the option of static cam or over the shoulder cam!!!! how many AAA games do this for there fans? Re fans have wanted capcom to do this for years!!! This is developed by 2 guys "2 GUYS" and they can do what capcom can't????

Keep the good work up XeniosVision this game is a masterpiece in the survival horror genre.

Whelp Im a sucker for survival/classic resident evil games soooo I brought the game and played for awhile now. And I can say, its very.. uhm... whats a polite way of saying this, amateurish. It looks rather poor in textures and animations aren't that great even though the lighting can be interesting at some points. (Why is there no turning-in-place animation?) I would give it a pass if the gameplay is good buuuut... the gameplay isn't good. Its very sluggish. While classic Resident Evil is tankish and sluggish, it passes cause its nicely animated and beautiful. And much of the action comes in reacting fast and carefully. Here~... Theres little to think about and hardly anything to challenge you as far as the first enemies are involved. (Unless you count the controls themselves as challenge. Why can't I look one way and move another way?) Sorry, even some of the atmosphere falls off. I shook my head at the RE1 inspired bathroom scene. (Seriously?) I can't recommend this. It plays poorly and it has very little charm to help.

Just depends on how pampered your tastes have become over the past few years. The game is really reminiscent of how survival-horror games were back in the late 1990's and early 2000's I am talking about titles like: Martian Gothic Unification, Countdown Vampires, Carrier, Deep Fear, Galerians, Blue Stinger, and Alone in the Dark.. just to name a few.Not just the big polished Resident Evil and Silent Hill blockbuster killer app and remakes we've all grown accustomed to.

I can totally understand why some people might be put off by a game like Black Soul. It isn't without its minor flaws and frustrations you'd expect from such a game. I personally enjoyed the 10+ hours I spent playing through it. You can tell the game developers are huge fans of genre, as a result the game plays out as a sort of love-letter to the games of that era. Black Soul had a few genuine thrills, a couple of cheap scares, an interesting epistolary story, a stellar cinematographic camera mode, and a killer soundtrack. I wish more companies, 'indie' or otherwise, would be as ambitious to create such a game.

Plus, one of the final levels in the game is a recreation of an actual abandoned psychiatric hospital. I mean, How cool is that!

Right after you hit new game, litterally right at the start after the loading screen finishes, the very first thing you see is a low-resolution almost corrupted looking texture, followed by the sound only working on the right side for a bit until you realize the music in that room where the game loads is area specific rather than completley ambient. It only get's worse when you start to play as Marylin Manson The China Doll in Luigi's Mansion then find yourself in a small kitchen instantly dead because a zombie just so happened to be there oh so casually. So you try again and die once more because while trying to fight it or even just look around your cursor hits the task bar because you tried to run windowed mode once now it is permanatly stuck in windowed mode and the mouse is not locked to the game, not in windowed mode, not with duel monitors.